In Australia, we’re a little too comfortable with media companies playing politics behind the scenes – but not putting forward their own candidates for election!

So it was a surprise to see independent online news site Crikey announce the “Crikey for PM” campaign, complete with registered candidate: K Black, who is running to become one of Victoria’s 12 senators.

Does this mean Crikey is manoeuvring to get a Manchurian candidate into Parliament – or even the Lodge?

No, they’re not. K Black is Crikey’s editor-in-chief’s mother, and she’s not running to get elected – but rather to give Crikey journalists (and readers) an inside look at how Australian elections work.

Already, they are experiencing how the deck is stacked against new entrants.

K Black needed 100 signatures from Victorians in order to run. That requirement is waived for political parties and sitting MPs.

Those 100 signatures just give K Black a spot on the ballot – in the “ungrouped” section alongside other independents she has no affiliation with. Victorians can only vote for her if they vote below the line, and specifically seek her out. Political parties appear above the line, with their logos.

It is this limitation that forced independent David Pocock to register a political party, “David Pocock”, to feasibly run for election in the ACT Senate. But that requires 1,500 members – easy enough for a nation-wide party, but difficult for many more local groups and campaigns.

K Black will be buried in the “Ungrouped” section below the line.

Crikey also had to stump up a $2,000 deposit – which they won’t get back unless K Black wins 4% or more of the Victorian vote. While a deposit makes sense to deter unserious candidates, the 4% threshold is “all or nothing”: at 4.01% of the vote, K Black would get her deposit back plus become eligible for hundreds of thousands of dollars in public funding. At 3.99% of the vote, nothing.

It will be interesting to see what Crikey and K Black make of the other roadblocks for new entrants – not least of which is that they are running against sitting MPs who have benefited from three years of taxpayer funded travel, communications budgets and staffing. The Australia Institute puts the advantages of incumbency at $3 million, not including tens of millions of dollars in public funding for the major parties, which rather puts the $2,000 deposit into perspective.

Finally, don’t expect to see too much unsolicited promotional material for K Black. As Crikey notes, political parties are exempt from key provisions of the Spam Act and the Privacy Act – a luxury not generally extended to independent candidates (with some exceptions, like sitting MPs).

I’m looking forward to following Crikey’s hands-on experience of the electoral system, and you can too.  

Just a reminder that it always pays to look back on history when the red-alert war alarm starts flashing – Russian ‘military’ planes have previously landed on Indonesian military bases – including as recently as 2017.

Two Turpolev Tu-95 planes (62-year-old young!) landed on Biak

That would be when the Coalition was in government. At that time, “Russian Navy ships from the Pacific Fleet have made port visits to Indonesia in both 2016 and 2017, while also taking part in international maritime reviews in Singapore and Thailand earlier this year.”

This is what they call in the biz, a distraction grenade. It’s a geo-political issue (Russia is very clearly attempting to cause some mischief in our domestic election) rather than a geo-strategic one (Indonesia does not want to make any sort of statement in this right now, given – everything.

So, short version – calm farms, people. It’s going to be OK.

You do have to wonder what the target audience is here and how it wins more votes than those the Liberals are already holding.

The Greens have launched their policy for free school meals – paid for by taxing corporations, which is another way of saying eat the rich, if you really think about it:

Foreign policy was the dominant issue at the leaders’ press conferences this afternoon. Reports that Russia wants to position aircraft at an Indonesian base in Papua have sent a shockwave through an otherwise dreary day of campaigning.

The Defence Minister is at pains to assure voters that Australia enjoys “a very close relationship with Indonesia”. In carefully coded language, Richard Marles said that Australia had “already been engaged with Indonesia on this request”, and the PM said Australia was “seeking further clarification”.

Within seconds, the issue had taken on a partisan hue. The opposition leader says that if the government did not have forewarning it would amount to “a catastrophic failure” from Albanese and foreign minister Penny Wong. Albanese says the relationship is “never better than it is right now”.

The truth is that Australians do not think often enough, or clearly enough, about Indonesia anymore. But we used to, only a few decades ago.

In the 1990s, Indonesia was absolutely central to Australian foreign policy. The Keating Government worked through 1994 to achieve a security agreement with Indonesia, which was ultimately signed the following year.

The relationship was more complicated in the Howard era, thanks to a series of crises including the Asian Financial Crisis (which threw Indonesia into a deep recession) and the conflict over Timor-Leste’s independence.

Things grew harder in the 2000s and 2010s. Indonesia became a variable in Australia’s difficult asylum seeker policy debate. Indonesia also affronted many Australians with the execution of Australian detainees Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.

Since then, Indonesia has not loomed quite so large in Australia’s public conversation. That’s clearly to our detriment.

There’s no substitute for clear-eyes strategy in this region, as Russia has sharply reminded us.

So let’s take a look at what is being said, amongst what isn’t being said.

Here is Richard Marles, the defence minister had to say about it all:

We have a very close relationship with Indonesia. We have a growing defence relationship with Indonesia. We have already been engaged with Indonesia on this request.

I’d note at this point, Indonesia has not responded to this request [from Russia]. We will keep engaging with Indonesia in a way which befits a very close friend and a very close friendship between our two countries.

We have been very focused on developing our bilateral relationship with Indonesia, including our bilateral defence relationship with Indonesia. Last year, we signed a defence cooperation agreement with Indonesia which really is the deepest-level defence agreement we’ve ever had with Indonesia. And we are seeing increasing cooperation between Australia and Indonesia at a defence level. And I expect all of that to continue.

In respect of this particular issue, we are already engaging with Indonesia at a senior level, and will continue to do so about the request.

Now I am obviously not a diplomat, or an expert on foreign affairs. But I do know diplomacy speak.

This says, ‘we have been talking to Indonesia about this, and Indonesia haven’t responded to Russia, and someone (probably Russia) has not made this public to cause trouble, but no one has agreed to anything and we are apart of the conversations saying ‘do not do this we think this is very bad’ and we think Indonesia agrees with that assessment.’

Also in that very quick press conference:

Q: Prime Minister, we’re here in the middle of a construction site. Peter Dutton said today he’d help his children with a deposit.

Albanese:

I don’t talk about families and I don’t go into my own personal details.

Q: You’ve had a few foreign affairs issues in this campaign. Will the government be sending Richard Marles…

Albanese:

We are in a campaign at the moment.

Q: You keep saying you’re seeking information about this incident from Indonesia. But it sounds like you haven’t heard back from Indonesia…

Albanese:

We are seeking further information from Indonesia. As you’re aware, I’ve been traveling from Hobart to here with you, or on a different plane, but at the same time.

Q: Prime Minister, what is the Australian government’s position on a station…

Albanese:

Obviously… We are seeking further information. We obviously do not want to see Russian influence in our region. Very clearly.

…We have a position, which is we stand with Ukraine, we regard Vladimir Putin as an authoritarian leader who has broken international law, who’s attacking the sovereignty of the nation of Ukraine.

Ok, so let’s go back to what Anthony Albanese has to say about that:

Our friends in Indonesia – the relationship has never been better than it is right now.

Did he know about the request before it was made public?

Albanese:

We are seeking further public information from Indonesia about it. I’ve answered the question. I can’t answer it any different way.

Q: Prime Minister, have we been too concerned about the influence of China in our region and not focused on Russia?

Albanese:

No – we have been right to have been engaged in our region, and we have an extremely positive relationship with our friends in Indonesia.

Q: With the relations with Indonesia never having been better, would a Russian airplane stationed in Indonesia harm that relationship?

Albanese:

What we’re seeking is proper clarification. That’s the way you deal with international relations. Making sure that you’re not flying from the hip – what we didn’t do when the United States made its decision on tariffs was question our defence relationship with the United States. It took John Howard to intervene, to point out to Peter Dutton that that wasn’t appropriate. We’ll respond in an appropriate way with our friends in Indonesia.

Peter Dutton also comments on the story that Russia has asked Indonesia to store some military aircraft on one of its island military bases, which obviously has alarm bells ringing with Australia.

Australia has “engaged” with Indonesia over the issue, Richard Marles said a little while ago.

Dutton says:

This would be a catastrophic failure of diplomatic relations if Penny Wong and didn’t have forewarning about this before it was made public. This is a very, very troubling development and suggestion that somehow Russia would have some of their assets based in Indonesia only a short distance from, obviously, the north of our country.

We need to make sure that the government explains exactly what has happened here. Did the Prime Minister know about this before it was publicly announced by the president of Indonesia? And what is the government’s response to it? The Prime Minister and the Foreign Affairs Minister should have the depth of relationship with Indonesia to have had forewarning of this. And if they haven’t, I think they need to explain to the Australian people what has gone wrong here.

Because this would be a very, very significant development and a negative one that’s obvious to all of us.